"Kim Dasol-shi, how likely is Malinin Misha-shi to be about to cause a problem I'm going to need to rescue him from if left unattended right now?"

Sigh. "Xe'd need someone to desire violence or destruction to do any real damage, even when xe's like this. And—" he holds up the bowl— "this is still here, which means that xe's not swapped targets yet, and probably won't. And I've been willing xim to be calm, so xe should be pretty tame for at least a bit."

He fishes in his pocket for a bit and pulls a pair of chopsticks from his pants pocket and stares at them. "<Aww. He even remembered the chopsticks,>" he says, to himself in Russian, with an utterly flat tone. He takes a quick bite and then looks at Ha Si-yeon. "...Want some?"

"Uhh... is that real? It's an illusion isn't it? What is it?"

Dasol nods and puts the chopsticks down in the bowl so that Ha Si-yeon can take them. Yeah, sharing's a little weird but whatever: they were compatible. He'd enjoy the extra zing, probably. "<Morkovcha!> A perfect illusory replica of the way my mother makes it, specifically. Whenever he tries to make it for me it always comes out just like this, even if I try to spice it up and imagine a different flavor." He giggles. "You'll probably like it? Do you like kimchi? It's just kimchi but carrots instead of cabbage. Traditional in my area."

If he focuses relentlessly enough on the morkovcha then he will not start crying again! Probably. "Mâr-cove-châ! I don't actually know what it would be in Korean. Try it."

He blinks and... tries some?

It's a rustic, down-home dish on the steppe, but the mother's love really shines through! It's spicy, too: Mrs. Yun liked it hot!

He's Korean, spicy can't scare him. "It's tasty. Was this the thing you wanted two kilos of?"

And who wouldn't, really? It's delicious!

"Ah! You remembered. That's so thoughtful of you! Xaxaxa. It's not actually a big deal, of course, I know it's probably not a thing in Korea proper since you have cabbage and all—"

"Dasol you could have ten kilos of this every day for the rest of your life if you wanted. No, sorry, that's still an underestimate, but I don't want to do maths right now." It's so good he can control his facial expressions and voice because he wants to scream.

This? This was Dasol's deepest, most forbidden desire? Carrot kimchi??????

Carrot kimchi????????????????????????????????????????????????

He hates Russia so much.

Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa don't cry don't cry— "What would I even do with ten kilos of morkovcha, Ha Si-yeon-sunbae? I doubt anybody else here will want to share it that much and I can hardly just throw it away. You would just make a menace of me as I forced it on every poor partner I had. Two kilos is more than reasonable, given how much I eat."

"That's—not the point." He sighs. "Sorry, never mind. I don't think there's anything I can say that'll convince you as much as just being here and seeing that nothing terrible happens will.

"...but I am going to look at your contract when you draft it up and if you don't include amenities to make your backlash more tolerable in it I'm going to rip it up and make you come up with some, myself. I'm really overstepping here but it's really hard to watch this, I want you to figure out what a silo would need to have to make you comfortable in it while backlashed and demand it."

Ugh, fine. "I don't really know what would help. At high enough levels of backlash to really matter, most stimuli are painful to me. Water is slimy, wind and fabric feel like razor wire, most food textures are like sand or glass. I can taste just fine, usually, so I try to comfort myself by holding something tasty in my mouth." Like Yulya's skin. Bark-bark. "Temperature is the first thing to go bad, and too hot is worse than too cold, but unless you can heat the floors or something crazy—"

"Okay, heated floors, that's pretty standard in Korean houses. Good sealed windows so there's no breeze, that's doable, too. Good temperature controls overall probably good, if water feels better than air probably a bathtub with a good thermostat."

"... you can do that? Heat floors?"

"Yeah. Some cheaper modern housing has done away with it somewhat to reduce costs but it's pretty common. We don't wear shoes inside our houses, after all, and the winter gets cold. Not as cold as Russia's, but..."

"'Pretty common?!'"

My god, they were not kidding about the degenerate West. Who can afford to spend money on that?

"Yeah. Unless you're specifically renting somewhere really cheap, the floors will be heated."

"...Fascinating." Now I need to check whether the floors in my current place are heated. Surely not... It was a few thousand rubles a night.

"Sunbae, you're going to spoil me. I really just need a place where people can't see me during guiding that's a moderate temperature."

"And any partner of yours who wasn't raised in Russia will look at—will be really mad at Quasar for not making your stay more comfortable than that. And go yell at prez about it. And for once it won't be deserved."

"Well, I guess... if it would cause guild-president-nim shame if I didn't accept it..." This is how the Western devil gets you. First it's heated floors, then who knows what.

"It would cause him shame if he didn't have a pretty good answer to anyone coming up to him to ask why we didn't provide you with the barest of necessities to care for your backlash in your silo, and different people will have different ideas about what the barest of necessities are but you are way more likely to undershoot than overshoot so why don't you try picturing what the actually perfect solution would be and we work off that? Like, would a sensory deprivation chamber work or would the liquid in it still feel bad or would it just be too boring or claustrophobic?"

This is a remarkably tough question. It has been years that he has been dealing with this, so... he had mostly just taught himself not to imagine alternatives. Now when he tries, there is just kind of a blank. "I mean, the perfect method would be just don't get any backlash until someone who needs me is right there. It's... a little tough to do without causing a disturbance. Sensory deprivation might be nice while I'm singing, though, so I can ramp up without being in too much pain. Easier to keep it not-horrible-sounding, too."

"—sorry, were you expected to stay at high backlash even when you weren't about to need to guide someone...?" He hates Russia. "Ah, what's your power, exactly?"